Everything is different. Everything is tense. Even y’all can feel, like, the intensity… Brooklyn first year. You know what I’m sayin’? Excitement… so everything is at an all-time high. I mean, at an all-time high. That goes for the referees, the ball-boys, the fans, janitors, you know what I’m sayin’? — Reggie Evans, Brooklyn Nets 2012-4 Jake Appleman’s Brooklyn Bounce: The Highs and Lows of Nets Basketball’s Historic First Season in the Borough (Scribner, 2014) is an engrossing account of the Nets’ 2012-3 season, starting with the opening of the Barclays Center and ending with the hiring of Jason Kidd, a former Net himself, as head coach in June last year. The game itself is front and centre. If you’re a Nets fan — or an ardent follower of the NBA more generally — there’s plenty here to entertain you. Appleman picks the season apart, analysing individual plays with the kind of athletic prose the best sports writing demands. He has an infectious stats-lust, both a hallmark of the Moneyball, FiveThirtyEight era we’re living in and the shibboleth that announces the true, die-hard fan. And if play-by-play fails to arouse, fear not, for Appleman also has a fine roster of supporting […]